The great chefs of contemporary cuisine, those demi gods in their modernist temples of high gastronomy- Achatz, the Adrias, Aduriz, Blumenthal, Dufresne, Keller and Robuchon among many others, are all standing on the shoulders of three giants.

Anderson, Greenville, Spartanburg. Or, more specifically, the AGS hospital system. You see it was there that the first commercial use of the sous vide system of low temperature cooking, so adored by many of our culinary contemporaries, began in the late 1960’s. And it was in the restaurant of the Greenville, SC Holiday Inn that the first commercial use of sous vide took place in 1970.

I spent 6 months working with the team at High Cotton Greenville in 2013, and on occasion would drive up and down Pleasantburg Drive looking for this overlooked shrine, but never found it. I think it may have been a pile of rubble near the 276 on ramp. But then, great things often come from humble beginnings, don’t they?

Just sayin’- here in South Carolina, we were doing sous vide before sous vide was cool.

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About Chef Forrest Parker

A devoted evangelist of all things South Carolina, Chef Forrest Parker is a long time licensed tour guide for the City of Charleston and was named a 2016 SC Chef Ambassador by Governor Nikki Haley.
More to come...